


Firing at the Ones who Run

by LeBibish



Category: Titanium (Music Video)
Genre: Gen, OCs - Freeform, brief mention of non-graphic violence, slight dystopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeBibish/pseuds/LeBibish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In local news today, there has been another supernatural occurance, this time at a local school. Stay tuned for more information on this ongoing terror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firing at the Ones who Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exeterlinden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeterlinden/gifts).



  _(There was another one this week--at the school this time. You hear it on the radio on the way home from work. They say a teacher called it in. A boy. A child._  


_Only not._

_The parents have been taken in for questioning of course. Did they know? Did they know they had a changeling child?_

_No official information has been released yet. But the neighbors are whispering._

_Everyone is always whispering.)_

 

He hadn’t meant to. Not at the school, not like that. It had just…built up. All day, he could feel the wind rushing inside him; every time he heard the other kids whispering around him, it grew. Even the teachers had been giving him funny looks during class. It was really irritating and every time he noticed it he felt the energy growing stronger.

He’d stayed late on purpose, hiding in the boys’ bathroom. If he timed it right, he knew that Mom would already be off to her next shift and wouldn’t ask him any questions when he got home. He figured he could go out into the woods then and let it all out. No one went out to the woods anymore. They wouldn’t notice if things got a little trashed out there.

Probably he should have waited somewhere other than the school. But where? If he tried going into the woods while it was still light, someone might notice him. And if someone noticed him, there would be trouble, since the curfew laws said the woods were off-limits. Hanging around some place other kids were would probably have made it worse; the way they were always looking around nervously and whispering and laughing at him. They were all so annoying. And Mom was home from 2 to 5 to grab dinner before her next shift at the supermarket. It definitely would have made it worse if she was worrying at him, or telling him Dad was a jerk and that it wasn’t their fault he left, or sitting at the table staring at her hands and not talking at all…

Yeah, that definitely would have made it worse.

Not that it wasn’t pretty bad already—messing up the school hallway like that. It hadn’t been that bad last time. And he had managed to get to the woods last time before anything happened. Now there were going to be all sorts of questions in the morning, and lots more whispers from the kids, and…

Was that Ms. Crane?

> **“Something is going on out there in the world, you know? Something's happening. I think it's important. I'm going to go see what I can figure out. I'll call again, I promise.”**

**Voice recording. Case number 242-007. Investigation ongoing. Wiretap requested for indefinite amount of time.** _  
_

 

* * *

 

_(The parents of that boy--the one from the school--they went on television today._

_"Give us our son back," they cried. "Your changeling has run back to you now. Give us back our child.”_

_He had a black eye. Hers were red and puffy. Your father said they look tired._

_You think they look scared.)_

He missed his bike. It had been a present from his dad and after…well, the crash had been pretty spectacular. The bike was completely totaled. He hadn’t been hurt at all. (It wasn’t really a crash. That’s just what he told his mom when she got that look on her face after catching him dragging the bike home).

Grabbing a bike someone had left at the school was bad, but it wasn’t like he could get in any more trouble, right?

How’d the police even get to the school that fast anyways? How fast would they figure out who he was? Did Ms. Crane recognize him?

Maybe not. He hadn’t ever had a class with her. She might not know who he was at all. Maybe she didn’t even know what had happened. The Deputy was probably cruising around trying to catch kids smoking on the playground.

Maybe Ms. Crane thought it was a bomb or something.

He had time. Grabbing the bike was good, he’d made it away before they were able to tell which way he went. No one was chasing him now, right? He couldn’t even hear any sirens.

He kind of wished he hadn’t trashed his own bike. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to ride hard then coast a bit. Feeling the wind on his face, watching the houses and people stream past him like a movie; he’d missed this feeling.

> **“I saw her outside the window when we were eating dinner. She had her backpack with her, the one she’s been packing to run away with. I knew she wanted me to come ~~with her~~ outside to talk to her, but I couldn't. Mom and Dad were so excited about visiting colleges over Spring Break. I knew it would ruin everything if I left the table early ~~again.~~**
> 
> **I’ll sneak out later tonight, just to talk to her. After they’ve gone to sleep.”**

**Hand-written in blue ink. Pink diary decorated with purple and red hearts with a metal lock. No key in evidence. The lock has been snapped open. Case number 242-057. Investigation on-going.**

 

* * *

 

  _(You know this can only go on so long. How many children can have been swapped for changelings, really?_

_You hear them on television, on the radio, yelling on the street._

_That's not my baby the police shot. It must be a changeling. My baby is still alive._

_My daughter's been taken away. She's not that bloody form in the ground. That's a changeling child, not my little girl. She’s been taken away, please help me find her._

_That's not my son. It can’t be. My husband wouldn’t do that to our son. He wouldn’t. He was just trying to make it tell us where our real son is._

_The voices are everywhere._

_You know it will never end.)_

 

 The TV was on again. He wished Mom would stop doing that. Before, she never left it on. She used to get on Dad and him about that all the time--she said it was a waste of resources and that it was rotting their brains anyways. She also used to be on him all the time about cleaning up too. Was that her dinner sitting in front of the TV? Ew. 

What was she watching anyways?

The news. The news that said there was a “Supernatural Occurrence at Local School.” And, yeah, that was his school from a helicopter or a satellite image or something. It was on the news already? He had to go. (Mom couldn’t have seen it, right? She wasn’t here, wasn’t home. She must be at work already).

His backpack already had most of what he needed. He’d been keeping it with him—a map, some matches, his notes from the books on survival he checked out of the library—just a few ideas. Money probably wouldn’t do him any good. They’d have his picture on TV pretty soon too. No one would sell him anything and he wouldn’t be able to go into town without someone calling the police anyway. He couldn’t carry a ton of food either. It wasn’t practical.

It might not be necessary either. He hadn’t felt hungry in a while. He’d mostly been eating fruit at home to make his mom look less worried and a lot of the food at school make him feel sick. That was one of the things the kids kept whispering about.

All he needed to grab were clothes to keep warm. He definitely still felt cold, at least. And…the note…the one he’d found on top of the old bridge in the woods…he needed to take that too…

 

> **“He's been acting so strangely, you see. Distant like. Hiding up in his room and not talking to anyone. None of his friends come by after school anymore and then yesterday he quit the soccer team. Quit! Just like that. He said it wasn’t important anymore. That's when I knew. It's not my son. That's why I called the police.”  
> **

**Witness testimony. Case number 242-464. Investigation ongoing. Subject detained.**  
 

* * *

 

_(They all run to the woods. Everyone knows that. Even when it seems they're running the other way, they must be planning to go to the woods._

_Changelings are tricky like that._

_They all go to the woods. There's talk of burning them down. All of the woods. A final forest fire to wipe them all out._

_You think to yourself:  building walls seems saner. Saner than burning children. Children who look like your own, but can't possibly be them. They can't be.)_

The woods were pretty quiet. People used to go camping in them. It was supposed to be relaxing, a way to get back to nature, to calm down or something. He got that. There was something special about being out here by himself.

No one went camping any more, of course. But he liked thinking about it. Sleeping bags and tents and all that. He wished he could have gone into a store and bought that kind of stuff. If they still sold things like that, he could have told his mom it was for camping with friends, so she wouldn’t worry.

He wondered if she was worried now. The police knew where he lived, they had to know where his mom worked. What would she say when they told her? Would she say it wasn’t true? (Would she say she had known all along?)

He concentrated on listening to noises around him. There weren’t any birds or anything. He heard them sometimes when he was in the woods before, but that was earlier in the year. They must not like the cold. It was getting colder too, as it got darker.

He wondered if he should have brought a flashlight with him. But flashlight beams were pretty easy to spot in the woods…like that one behind him!

He ran.

It was different from being on the bike. Going fast like this didn’t make him feel free, didn’t make him feel safe. He was too slow, and they were too fast. They were yelling a lot too. How’d they have breath to yell like that?

He couldn’t breathe at all.

A hand on his shoulder. A foot against his knee. And he was on the ground. They were still yelling and the guns…the guns…

He curled up and whispered into the cold ground, “Please.”

After the blow up in the school, after making the bike go faster (he had. He’d been so scared that he had made it go faster than it should have. And he’d still been too slow), after panicking in his room and letting it leak out, after pulling the keys to him so he could open the door…after all that he wasn’t sure he could pull any more energy out of himself.

“Please,” he whispered, the crackling of dried leaves drowning out the men’s voices. And he felt it rising, a hurricane inside him.

 

> **“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't make it stop.”**

**Suicide note. Found in subject’s hand, written on yellow paper in black ink. Case number 242-241. Case closed.**

* * *

 

  _(You can barely stand to look anyone in the eyes anymore. No one can. Who knows what you’re looking at really._

_A few minutes ago, you spilled coffee all over yourself by running into an old man on the street—both of you keeping your head down._

_He had looked scared and you knew how he felt._

_Then he had laughed and laughed again until he was crumpled over in the street, laughing. You started laughing too._

_It felt so good to laugh again._

_You don’t know his name. You don’t know anything about him except that he has really deep wrinkles around his eyes and his salt and pepper beard soaks up coffee almost as well as your scarf. But he’d offered to buy you another drink to make up for what you spilled and you think you’re going to let him.)_

 

There was a map on the back of the note he had found on the old bridge. He hadn’t been able to read it before, but after he left the place where the men had caught him, he’d pulled out the note again and he’d realized where he was supposed to go.

It took a few days. He was actually starting to get hungry again. It felt good. Being hungry felt really good.

He’d slept all right too. The thermal stuff he’d stopped at home to grab kept him pretty warm. Plus, he was moving around at night and building up heat. He hadn’t slept much though because he was still riding the wave of energy from that night. It kept him going.

The map took him west, through the woods. He’d crossed a couple of roads, but none in the last day or so. Had seen a few old cars and cement blocks, but again, not in a while. There were still birds in the woods though. He’d thought there weren’t, when he was scared before, but there were. Even as cold as it was and with all the leaves fallen, there were still birds around.

Without the leaves on the trees to block the view of the sky, it was pretty easy to tell which way he was going. That was how he was sure he’d been going west the whole time, like the map told him to. He wasn’t quite sure where it was that he was going, but it was going to be someplace good. He could feel it.

 

> **“I dreamed of trees again last night. They were all around me with great big leaves and I was hiding in them. The shade was cool and I knew it was so hot in the sunlight that I would burn if I went out. The branches were making a lot of noise. I think they were trying to tell me something.”**

**Hand-written entry in black ink. Journal found on bedside table of subject: cover is blue leather, embossed with the word: “Dreams.” Case No. 242-1011. Investigation ongoing.**

* * *

 

_(You don’t turn on the television anymore. You listen to CDs in the car instead of the radio. You sing along to your favorite songs.)_

He was staying with a woman named Marcie. She was really only a little bit older than him, but everyone treated her like a grown up. She had her own house and everything! Everyone new who came in had to stay with someone who could show them around, tell them the rules, and help them get used to all the work.

There was a lot of work to do. The houses around were either really old or still in the process of being built, and either way they needed a lot of repairs so people could stay in them. There was getting food together too—even though a lot of them didn’t seem to need to eat much. Some of the older people, they would go traveling into towns to sell stuff and then they’d bring more stuff back with them. Marcie said they were mostly people who didn’t have anyone to report them missing, so they weren’t on any lists.

Everyone expected him to work too. There were classes, although they weren’t exactly like the ones he was used to, but they were a lot shorter and didn’t take up much time. He had to help out building and fixing stuff all the rest of his time. It was easier for him than some of the others, because even when both of his hands were busy, he could still pull stuff to him or hold it in place until someone was able to help. He was always pretty tired by the end of the day.

But no one whispered here or gave him funny looks. When he felt the wind rising inside him in that weird way that meant it was going to do some damage when he let it out, Marcie showed him a place he could do that. Knocking down trees was pretty useful and there were other things people wanted knocked down too. Sometimes Marcie would come with him and burn the debris left over. She controlled the energy in her better than he could, but she said it just took practice. She said he’d get a lot better now that he was using it every day instead of pushing it down and trying to hide it.

On top of the work he had to do for the ‘good of the community,’ people would pay him for some extra help. Marcie said he could probably earn enough to get someone to go look in on his mom for him. Just to make sure she was alright. Marcie said it was ok to miss her and to be worried about her but that she would probably want him to be safe more than anything. Marcie told him he was safe a lot. It should’ve been annoying, but it made him feel warm instead.

He’d been right. This was a good place.

 

> **I [____] you're scared. It'll be alr[___]t. We can help. Find us (writing illegible)**

**Burnt piece of paper. Found in fire pit in campground. Case number 242-063. Investigation ongoing.**

**Author's Note:**

> I know I leave a lot of questions still open, but I hope this fulfills your desire to see more of the world shown in the video. I really enjoyed writing it.


End file.
